East India Company, Bombay Presidency, Early coinages: English design, tin Double-Tinny or Bujerook, [16]75, arms of the Company, rev. 2 above 75 [value above last two numerals of date], 2.72g/12h (Prid. 228, this coin illustrated [Sale, lot 503]; Stevens 1.69; KM. 138). Extremely fine with traces of original mint bloom, extremely rare, only two others believed to be in private hands [certified and graded NGC MS 62] £2,000-£3,000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Puddester Collection.

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Collection

H.A. Parsons Collection, Part II, Glendining Auction (London), 11-13 May 1954, lot 893
F. Pridmore Collection, Part II, Glendining Auction (London), 18-19 October 1982, lot 503, ticket.

Owner’s ticket, ‘over the nearly 40 years I have had this coin I have traced only one other sold by Spink in Nov. 79’ [subsequently Fore Collection, lot 1893].

Literature:
Illustrated in Fred Pridmore, The Coins of the British Commonwealth of Nations...Part 4, India, Volume I, p.166.

Gerald Aungier (1640-77), president of the Surat mint, oversaw the production of the first tinnies, or bujerooks (the latter name derived from the Portuguese bazarrucco, or so-called ‘market money’), in December 1672. Metal was supplied from Surat and, in later years, England. Coining of tin continued in a haphazard manner until 1716, with the balemark replacing the Company’s arms, although the coins did not see wide circulation and were mostly used to pay the wages of Company labourers and soldiers, who struggled to obtain the denominated exchange rate of 11 tinnies to one copperoon when trying to spend them. A final coinage in tin, using surplus metal in the Government’s warehouse, was made in 1717-18